[WikiEN-l] Re: Columbia encyclopedia article titles

Wed Mar 3 02:59:48 UTC 2004

The phone directories case (Feist v. Rural) is not relevant or helpful 
to us here. The point there was that telephone listings involve purely a 
compilation of factual information. The selection of encyclopedia 
subjects does not--as we should know, it involves considerable editorial 
judgment.

If we copy titles from Columbia or anywhere else, it's a bad idea. 
Comparative advertising is a dubious defense, especially since right now 
it sounds like we're using this much more for internal reference than 
for outside advertising. Besides, like all fair use, it depends on the 
factual situation, and part of the equation is the scope of copying 
going on. Wholesale copying of article titles is not likely to be fair 
use under any analysis.

Instead of avoiding copyright paranoia, why not just avoid copying, 
especially so blatantly? We can do better working from our own content 
than using somebody else as a base. From Jimbo's post, it appears that 
he thinks it's a bad idea, too.

--Michael Snow